September 22, 2014

Lloyd's Tower, London

The past few days, I've been engrossed with architecture, and I blame some of my historic and housing classes for that. Specifically, I've been thinking heavily about a bizarre skyscraper that sticks out like a sore thumb in the London Financial District: Lloyd's Tower – easily one of the most idiosyncratic buildings in London.

I first saw the building during my London Trip this past July and had mixed feelings at first from seeing it. The building had a lot of noise and activity stemming from the external pipework, elevators and spiral staircase that resembled much of a drill bit. The array of items and lack of uniform made it out to eventually be seen in my eyes as one of the most unique buildings I ever saw. The patterns on the building are unusual, and stem not from the framework, but elements like elevators, stairways, corners, and utility lines. Simply put, there's nothing out there quite like that.

Perhaps a final point of noting is the idiosyncrasies in terms of style it seems to exhibit. Looking at the building gives me a sense of playing some dystopian futuristic video game. It has, as a friend from London pointed out (Dannyboy), a "grungy" futuristic look it, rather than a more glossy, glass-centric futuristic look that so many other buildings in London seemed to have. (Cheese Grader, Walkie Talkie and Gherkin, I'm looking at you).